"What we're trying to do with this fund is to make sure that it's targeted at parts of the country that have been struggling to create private sector jobs, making sure that the money goes to projects which not only create jobs quickly, but - this is the crucial thing and I think distinguishes it from previous government projects which have tried to heal the north-south divide - is to make sure those jobs really, really last," Clegg told ITV's Daybreak, according to PoliticsHome. Later Clegg is visiting a factory with Lord Heseltine.

Otherwise, it looks fairly patchy. Eric Pickles, the communities secretary, is making an announcement about a "fair deal" for voluntary groups. Anne Milton, the health minister, is speaking at the Royal College of Nursing conference. And - so far - that seems to be about it. I very much hope it livens up. As usual, I'll be covering all the breaking political news, as well as looking at the papers and bringing you the best politics from the web. I'll post a lunchtime summary at around 1pm, and an afternoon one at about 4pm.

Photograph: Reuters

8.46am: Nick Clegg wasn't just talking about the regional development fund in his interviews this morning. As PoliticsHome report, there were some other good lines to emerge from his appearances on Sky and Daybreak. Here are the main points.

Of course I think he's wrong. These are very difficult times, and I'm not denying we're having to make controversial decisions, as anybody would who had come into power after the election last May, because we're cleaning up a terrible mess that was left behind. I think actually, Warren Bradley and everyone in Liverpool knows what it's like to clean up the mess left by Labour, that's exactly what Liberal Democrats in Liverpool had to do.

• Clegg said that David Cameron was "absolutely right" to complain about the small number of black students at Oxford. "We do need to make real efforts to say to universities, if you want to continue to get support from the taxpayer to educate our young people, you've got to make sure that British society is better reflected in the people you take into the university in the first place," Clegg said.

• He rejected suggestions that the fact that he has been left off Lib Dem election leaflets means that he is perceived as a liability. As Nicholas Watt reports in the Guardian today, Lib Dems in Sheffield - where Clegg is an MP - have been leaving his face of election literature. Clegg insisted he was not being snubbed.

That is seriously scraping the barrel. We put out hundreds and thousands of leaflets, and, to be honest, for people to read into the fact that one leaflet doesn't have my mug-shot on the front I really think is pushing it a bit.

Even when you do get the applications, and I'm talking now from London boroughs like Tower Hamlets, where there's just one person going this year, and London boroughs like my own constituency [Tottenham], there is a difference in the rates. One in three applicants who were white were successful, one in five who were black were successful applying for Oxford University. If it walks like a duck, it quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck.

9.33am: Here are the headline inflation figures.

• Consumer prices index (CPI) fell to 4.0% in March from 4.4% in February.

• The headline rate of retail prices index (RPI) inflation fell to 5.3% in March from 5.5% in February.

• The underlying rate of RPI inflation fell to 5.4% in March from 5.5% in February.

9.56am: Vince Cable, the business secretary, has also been responding to Warren Bradley's call for the Lib Dems to abandon the coalition. (See 8.46am.) Cable told BBC Breakfast that dealing with the financial crisis would take time.

It's going to take the five years of this parliament. We've got to show stamina, this is a marathon not a sprint, and I would recommend to Warren Bradley, who is an admirable Liberal Democrat, that he concentrates on the excellent record of the Liberal Democrats of restoring Liverpool after the terrible mess it was in. They should really concentrate on that and the mistakes made by the Labour council and not give up because this is a long term project but we will turn the British economy around, and the Liberal Democrats in Liverpool and everywhere else will benefit from that.

10.11am: And here's Vince Cable on the inflation figures.

I am encouraged. There is a problem and we are importing a lot of inflation. But the Bank of England has kept its nerve and I think they deserve great credit for that. They are looking ahead, not just looking at today, and they have kept interest rates low, which is what the economy needs.

10.23am: Nick Clegg has told BBC News that the amount of money Britain is borrowing would pay for a new school every 20 minutes. Here's the quote from PoliticsHome.

As a country we are borrowing £400m every single day. That's not your money, that's not my money, that is everyone else's money at stake, that is enough money which is being borrowed every day which could build a primary school every 20 minutes.

Photograph: Rex Features Rex Features/Rex Features

10.45am: Jeremy Paxman, watch out. Gillian Duffy is auditioning for the role of national politician-inquisitor-in-chief. Following her confrontation with Gordon Brown during the election campaign, she had a go at Nick Clegg this morning when he was visiting Rochdale. Her first question was about Clegg's refusal to enter into a coalition with Labour (which was a bit rich, given that she was not exactly an enthusiastic Gordon Brown fan herself). Then she wanted to know if Clegg was happy about the cuts. I'll post the quotes in a moment. As an interviewer, she's certainly persistent. Perhaps someone will sign her up.

10.55am: Here are the highlights from Gillian Duffy v Nick Clegg. She started off by asking him why he didn't form a coalition with Labour after the election.

Clegg: Because, you may remember that no one won the election, no one had a majority, and there was no way - because Gordon Brown and I talked about it - there was no way that the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats would have had enough MPs to run a government. And I thought it was very important - still think it's very important - that you've got a government that actually can do things, because we've got to sort out the mess that we inherited from the previous lot ....

Duffy: Can you honestly tell me now, look me in the eye, and say that you're quite happy with all these policies that have gone wrong for your party?

Clegg: I'll tell you what, whoever was in power now, whether it was Labour ... any government now would have to take difficult decisions. If anyone is telling you from the Labour party that somehow there's a magic wand solution, that we can do this without any controversy, they are frankly fibbing to you.

Duffy: I'm asking [you].

Clegg: Absolutely. I'll tell you why it's very important we get this right. If you don't clear the debts that we've got, all that's going to happen, Gillian, is that we are going to be asking young people here in Rochdale to pick up the tab for our generation's debt ...

Duffy: I've just been listening to you on the television, and I've listened to you on the radio, and that's just the same speech you gave an hour ago. But, to me, I'm just asking you. Are you happy with what's happening now?

Clegg: If we don't get this right now, we won't be able to do good things in the future. That's the problem.

Duffy: Liberal policies were a lot like Labour policies years and years ago ... Now I'm sorry Nick.

Clegg: You may disagree, but if we don't do the difficult things now ....

11.23am: Angela Eagle, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, has put out this statement about the inflation figures.

The fall in food prices which has seen inflation come in lower than expected is welcome. But thanks in part to George Osborne's VAT rise inflation is still running at double the target rate.

Across the country millions of people on low and middle incomes are being squeezed from every direction by rising prices made worse by the Tory VAT rise and from this month cuts to tax credits, cuts to childcare support and a child benefit freeze. It's no wonder consumer confidence is at a nearly 20 year low and retail sales are suffering a sharp decline.

And to make matters worse George Osborne's own goal in raising VAT at a time of rising world food and oil prices continues to threaten a rise in mortgage rates for homeowners.

A year ago the economy was starting to grow strongly, unemployment was falling, inflation was lower and so borrowing came in £21bn lower than forecast. The economy should be growing strongly this year, but all that changed when George Osborne came in and decided to cut further and faster than any other major country. Britain now faces the worst of all worlds with rising unemployment, high inflation and slow growth. The result is that borrowing will actually be £46 billion higher than expected.

We know that cutting too deep and too fast is hurting, but the signs are that it isn't working either. It's time George Osborne understood that and thought again.

11.29am: Sheffield University has announced that it is going to charge tuition fees of £9,000. Labour's John Denham says this is particularly embarrassing for Nick Clegg, one of the local MPs. "When a university in Nick Clegg's own city charges the maximum £9,000 in tuition fees, it's clearer than ever that his promise to student voters in Sheffield and around the country [not to raise tuition fees] wasn't worth the paper it was written on," says Denham.

11.39am: You can read all today's Guardian politics stories here. And all the politics stories filed yesterday, including some in today's paper, are here.

The rest of the papers were a bit thin, politically, but these two articles were worth a read.

• Steve Richards in the Independent says health reforms are the real faultline in the coalition.

One of the more thoughtful Lib Dems tells me their opposition to the NHS changes is as important now in defining the party as their stance against the war in Iraq. Yet at the top there are ministers who were enthusiastic about the changes in the first place, including their minister at the Department of Health. Next, there are those like Lamb who want a slower pace of implementation and other relatively moderate changes.

The view of their party as expressed at their recent conference in Sheffield is opposed for more fundamental reasons. The former MP, Dr Evan Harris, argues that the proposed reforms contain "gross breaches" of the coalition agreement with what he calls "a total absence of locally elected representatives on commissioning bodies, and the proposed abolition of those commissioning bodies, the primary care trusts" ...

The precise impact on the Coalition of a referendum and the reform of a reform is impossible to forecast. For now, I make a single prediction. The forthcoming changes to the NHS Bill will involve the appointment of more bureaucrats to regulate, mediate and to protect us from the potential consequences of the original reforms, the "building blocks" which Clegg revealed in his Today programme interview would still be in place. The Conservatives' vision of a "post bureaucratic age" will involve the appointment of more bureaucrats. They would be wiser to scrap the Bill and start all over again.

• Mary Riddell in the Daily Telegraph says Nick Clegg would like to change the rule saying male heirs take precedence in the line of royal succession.

Republicans who once hoped Mr Clegg was one of them now deem him a washout. But, despite his failure to subject the monarchy to the same scrutiny as other public institutions, he does have an agenda for "modest, Whiggish constitutional reform". According to a friend, he believes primogeniture is "better dealt with in advance than post hoc". Legislation, possibly in this Parliament, is being "actively discussed" by members of the Privy Council, of which Mr Clegg is Lord President. But don't hold your breath. Reform is "still not very far up the agenda" ...

Like it or not, the monarchy is our future. Wedding fever and cant about modernity are obscuring the fact that some rules shackling our head of state are so sexist, bigoted and, frankly, bonkers that, had Alf Garnett and Henry VIII collaborated in their devising, they could not have produced a more dismal charter. Mr Cameron should stop burbling about bunting. The best wedding present he could offer Prince William and his bride is legislation to equip the House of Windsor for tomorrow's world.

11.56am: After her meeting with Nick Clegg (see 10.45am and 10.55am), Gillian Duffy said that she wasn't convinced by his claim that the government was doing the right thing. Here's what she told reporters.

Simon was an extraordinarily talented leader of local government in London. He was a pioneering leader of Westminster city council, and in recent years a tower of strength to the mayor and his administration at City Hall, as deputy mayor and chief of staff. He was a much loved and much admired member of the Conservative family, and a familiar presence at party conferences and party gatherings. In all the years I have known him he was always kind, reliable, trustworthy and incredibly hard-working. He was in public life and public service for all the right reasons. He still had a huge amount to give and a great future ahead of him. He will be greatly missed.

12.24pm: The Cabinet Office, the government department responsible for promoting openness, has been criticised by the Information Commission for responding to Freedom of Information requests too slowly. Here an extract from the Press Association story.

Information commissioner Christopher Graham singled out the Cabinet Office as well as the Ministry of Defence and Birmingham City Council for failing to improve their responses.Negotiations are now under way over the "appropriate regulatory action" to be taken in a bid to speed up their processes.Three months of monitoring by the Information Commissioner's Office following concerns over response times, including public complaints, found none of the three had managed to cut delays.Another four - the local authorities in Hammersmith & Fulham, Islington, Wolverhampton and Westminster - have been asked to sign undertakings to improve performance.Mr Graham said the other 26 bodies which had been placed under scrutiny had made sufficient improvements, although six - the Home Office, the Metropolitan Police Service, NHS North West, the London Borough of Croydon, the Scotland Office and the London Borough of Newham - were told that the process had revealed "some areas of concern".

• Nick Clegg has received the thumbs down from Gillian Duffy, the Rochdale woman described as a bigot by Gordon Brown during the general election campaign. She met the deputy prime minister while he was visiting the town and grilled him on whether he was happy about the way government policies were going. Unimpressed by his response, she told reporters afterwards: "Let's face it, it's all gone wrong." (See 10.45am, 10.55am and 11.56am.)

• David Cameron has joined those paying tribute to Sir Simon Milton, Boris Johnson's chief of staff, who has died at the age of 49. Milton, a former leader of Westminster council, was widely liked and admired by people across the political spectrum in London and national politics. (See 12.04pm.)

• The Institute for Public Policy Research has released research showing that the alternative vote would not allow BNP supporters to decide the result of a constituency election. As Allegra Stratton reports, this contracts claims made by the No to AV camp.

1.56pm: London Ambulance Service is today announcing plans to axe 890 jobs over the next five years to make savings of £53m, the Press Association reports.

2.29pm: John Pugh, the Lib Dem MP, has told Sky that the health bill could bring down the coalition at the next election.

This is a real danger for the coalition. Everybody's got to be concerned about getting this legislation right, otherwise simply we will lose the next general election on it.

According to PoliticsHome, Pugh also said that there would have to be "substantial" change to the legislation.

In fact we don't get substantial reform, what we have is the alternative, which is a slow train crash. Because the legislation as it stands simply will not work, and NHS professionals are saying as much.

I think that many British people will be concerned that this man has been allowed to leave the UK. I think it's very important that our country doesn't become a transit lounge for alleged war criminals.

3.15pm: If political broadcasts get to determine the outcome of the referendum on the alternative vote, then I'm afraid it's all over. The no camp broadcast theirs last night. It was utterly disingenuous - but also slick, punchy, amusing, and about as effective as any political broadcast can be these days (which is moderately effective, but no). The yes one is going out this evening - and I'm afraid it's rather dreadful. It conveys the impression that anyone in favour of AV is a hectoring weirdo.

The video from Yes to Fairer Votes says AV would make MPs work harder. In his paper, Alan Renwick rejects this.

AV would be unlikely significantly to change the standards of MPs' behaviour or the relationship between MPs and voters. It might make some MPs focus more on constituency work – which might or might not be desirable.

But the "MPs will work harder claim" is not as flaky as the three assertions made in the No to AV video.

The no team suggest that AV will make hung parliaments much more likely. The academics disagree. Curtice produces figures showing that, since 1983, only one general election fought under AV would have resulted in a hung parliament - the 2010 one, which was hung under first past the post. Renwick says that AV would make coalition governments "slightly more frequent", but that this is happening anyway.

The no camp also claim that AV would result in the person who comes second (on first preferences) actually winning. This is certainly possible. But Curtice points out that in the 30 Scottish local government byelections held under AV since 2007, 26 of them have been won by the candidate who came first on first preferences (ie, who would have won under first past the post).

The third objection from the no camp was that it was just too complicated. AV has never seemed that confusing to me. But if you do rate this as an objection, then first past the post would have to go too. According to Renwick, "even after decades of experience, many voters do not understand FPTP. Focus group research conducted by David Farrell and Michael Gallagher in 1998 found that many participants could not explain how FPTP worked. For example, 'many seemed unaware that MPs could be elected with only a minority of the vote'."

4.09pm: Here's an afternoon reading list.

• Nicholas Watt on his blog says Ed Miliband has made history by attending a meeting of the national security council.

• Gary Gibbon on his Channel 4 blog says a Tory MP, Douglas Carswell, has called for an investigation into whether George Osborne misled MPs when he said he did not support Alistair Darling's decision to sign Britain up to the EU financial stabilisation mechanism on the weekend after the general election.

I understand what happened way back in May 2010 was that the then Chancellor, Mr Darling, phoned George Osborne to check if he was ok with the decision he was minded, reluctantly, to take, backing the facility. "You're the Chancellor," Mr Osborne is supposed to have said (maybe it was a dark moment in the coalition negotiation fluctuations). Mr Osborne is also thought to have said he realised the EU would vote on a QMV basis so we couldn't stop the measure. He asked if there was any case for abstaining, but I hear was told that would simply lose us influence and to no gain. And that was more or less it. A civil servant note of the conversation exists and the government has toyed with publishing the relevant papers with some sections withheld. I hear Mr Darling is strongly of the view that the whole lot should be published.

• Charlie Beckett on his Polis blog discusses Steve Richards' theory that Ken Livingstone is the politician who is best at handling the broadcast media.

• James Forsyth at Coffee House says one theory about David Cameron's outburst about Oxford's record in relation to admitting black students may have been related to the fact that he is "giving a speech on immigration later this week, with some tough language in it, and so was trying too hard to show that he is anti-racist."

Sometimes life just isn't fair. Simon Milton was one of life's good guys. Likeable, clever, competent and above all a conciliator. Even political opponents found it difficult to be nasty about him.

4.16pm: Here's an afternoon summary.

• Anne Milton, a health minister, has said that people should delay going into politics until they are over 45. "If anybody's got political aspirations can I recommend you wait till you're over 45," she said when she was attending the Royal College of Nursing conference in Liverpool. "You sort of know stuff when you're over 45." As the BBC's Nick Triggle points out, this may not go down well with David Cameron, Nick Clegg or George Osborne - all of whom are under 45.

• Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, has been criticised for not agreeing to speak to the main RCN conference. He is attending the conference tomorrow, but he will hold a Q&A with about 50 nurses instead of addressing the whole conference in the main hall. Julian Newell, an A&E nurse from Sheffield, told the conference: "I think it's a shame Andrew Lansley does not have the guts to come up and face congress as a whole tomorrow. I'm not sure it's the right thing to say we'll have a selected group of small people to meet with him. I would rather us say if you can't face congress as a whole then we don't want to meet with him."